SAN PATRICIO COUNTY, Texas — A study by AgriLife shows Texas farmers are experiencing a better cotton harvest this year compared to the last two years but local farmers are telling us that although they're producing a lot of cotton, this doesn't mean they're going to be make a big profit in return.
Nueces County and San Patricio County are some of the biggest cotton producers in Texas. Local farmers like Scott Frazier said they're having a difficult time making a big profit with this popular crop.
"Our biggest problem we have right now is commodity prices are terrible and input cost is extremely high," Frazier said.
Frazier said cotton is a high-input crop to grow, it means the use of expensive items such as heavy equipment, fossil fuels, commercial fertilizers and more.
"It's the same way for our tractors, our pickers and all the equipment we use," Frazier said "It just keeps going higher and higher."
According to the United States Department of Agriculture Weekly Cotton Market Review, as of August 23, the average price of cotton is 62.07 cents per pound. Around the same time last year, it was reported to be 80.60 cents.
The manager of the EdCot Co-op Gin Daniel Luehrs said this year's cotton harvest is better than past years.
"This crop will be a little bit more than the past two years and it's good because a lot of our infrastructure that relates to cotton harvest has needed something to pull us back up," Luehrs said.
Although, the cotton harvest was better this year, Frazier said right now there isn't enough demand to get the price where it needs to be.
"We like to shoot for or try to build a budget to have 10% margin or profit built into our budget. Realistically it's probably 2 to 5 most years. This year it'll be a negative, maybe 10% and it's just because the price of the cotton and the input cost are so out of whack right now," Frazier said.